Featured Toyota BEV attitude

Toyota is correct.

With regard to infrastructure, my travel to Tanzania last summer made that overwhelmingly clear. The roads there were dominated by Toyota cars. Electricity was a luxury. They couldn't embrace plug-ins quickly even if they wanted to. Here, we have the capability but not the desire. I live in a thriving area with lots of new construction; we are now a CARB state too. Yet, support for recharging is almost never addressed.

With regard to technology, the awakening of NCA and NMC shortcomings should become apparent soon to those who weren't paying attention. Only now are those who pushed hard for large-scale battery production are having second thoughts about having bet an uncompetitive chemistry, nothing even related to solid-state. Dependency upon Cobalt & Nickel is already starting to look like a liability on several fronts.

In other words, all the mocking of Toyota was really just rhetoric from enthusiasts. Early-Adopters were correct about the future of passengers vehicles but didn't understand obstacles the industry still faces. We will soon see well thought out BEV design from Toyota on roads in small parts of the world that are ready. But when you look at the bigger picture, there is much to still address elsewhere.

That's what is meant by "know your audience". Think about their background, their circumstances, their resources. Like it or not, Toyota is pushing diverse offerings because they do know. We'll get our plug-ins. For those who won't be able to for a long time still, they'll have choices that are clean and don't consume fossil-fuels.

 

.... and what about the eskimos, traveling in animal skin kayaks with no place to recharge ..... and what about the cave dwelling Afghans .... not even a pot to piss in ....
thank you for Toyota's restatement. Unless dragged into the 21st century, they would always be able to have lots of excuses as to why they're trying to force hydrogen cars on everyone - but not worrying about Tanzania. Double standard?

Early 1900's all over again. People on horse-drawn carts & wagons had to be dragged kicking & screaming into the mid-1900's. The world is into its third decade with plugins now. Time for Toyota to stop with the anti-EV pro hydrogen boondoggle.

boon·dog·gle

/ˈbo͞onˌdäɡəl/

noun

work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value.
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Same thing in northern Togo where I recently spent a month. Power would be off several times a day for hours at a time. And when it was on, the voltage was all over the place, mostly dangerously low. We have serious line conditioners for equipment that's connected to the grid. There is no way I'd plug my car into that power grid. They'd destroy the charger probably the first day.

 

Last time I was in the Middle East (or Southern California) brownouts and blackouts were sortova big deal, and we had to disable the alarms on all of the power monitors that were attached to the local power grid.

People always look at ONE region, state, country, etc and think that what works locally will work everywhere.

Public Transportation is like that...meaning that it's a no-brainer in places like the EU and Japan but in other places?
Not so Much.
EVEN if crime, grime, and panhandling weren't a factor.

Toyota is a world-wide car manufacturer.
Even ISIS and the Taliban drive 'em.

As much as I personally loathe their cooperate culture in the US, I'm fairly content to let them do them.

If they wind up being Sears, or Eastman Kodak?
Well.....that's evolution.

 

I want to be outraged about this but just can't. We know in 2040 - still 19 years away many will still want ice vehicles. They will either keep them around which likely could be more polluting as they age or replace them.

Zero is a great slogan, but really getting very low is most of the way there and less costly.

I'm not giving toyota a pass. They still are fighting against plug-ins and the transition, but they are now finally investing. In 2030 if policy makers do proper things most new low priced (bellow $50K in 2021 USD) cars and suvs that are 250 mile range or less will greatly outsell these vehicles without a plug. Then the writing is on the wall.

I would bet even those making pledges may not honor them if there is profit in the market.

VW is interesting one here. They want to have low or no polluting liquid fuel to run in there high performing porsche and audi cars, likely all phevs and bevs by 2030. Porsche is making this fuel in chile right now as a pilot project, but "Green" methanol is the precursor and its probably cheaper to have the hybrids and phevs of 2040 run on that then to upgrade it to green gasoline or diesel. This idea makes hydrogen for personal transportation extremely unlikely except for tiny markets in 2040.

 

Is there a compatibility issue with methanol and existing petroleum infrastructure?

 

oh well, the rest of the pollution we make isn't getting any better either

 

The cell towers have their own backup generators which makes them, afaik, the most reliable utility in the country.

There are lots of private solar panels, but only among the wealthy other than little ones that people get so they can run a light bulb and charge their phones.

The radio station has a large solar installation but they ruined their batteries so they are only able to run a little stuff off solar till they get new batteries. To help them bridge that gap, I connected them to the public utility and wired in a 30 kVA line conditioner. But now two of the three incoming phases have voltages too low for the line conditioner to compensate. It will likely be months before the PUCO fixes that. One day while I was there last summer, the power went off at least a dozen times in about a minute.

I spent nine years working in radio in Honduras and it was almost that bad there, too.

Edit to add: the original problem is a combination. First, they buy their electricity from neighboring Ghana which has a big hydro plant on a huge reservoir. But the reservoir dries up in dry season. But even in rainy season, the demand is higher than production and preventative maintenance is pretty much unheard of. I can't do anything about those issues. All I can address is what's on our side of the electric meter and, except for the batteries they ruined by bypassing the temperature probe, our side of the meter is fine.

 

Really? If visibility is any indication, the difference in places like Los Angeles and Denver over the past 40 years is staggering. We used to live in the Denver area. There was almost always an ugly brown haze over the city almost obscuring the mountains.

 

in regards to carbon and climate change, but also worldwide, not just the usa

 

What are "we" gonna do about the rest of the world? BTW, you do know that 10,000 or so years ago, your part of the world was buried about a mile deep under ice?

 

I still can't find anywhere to charge within a 1-mile radius of my work in downtown Los Angeles of all places. When I'm out and about almost every single charger I encounter is occupied and many have a wait-list on Chargepoint. A 250+ mile BEV will still work for me most of the time by charging overnight at home, but even in high-density urban areas with relatively high adoption like California have woefully inadequate charging infrastructure to support widespread BEV adoption.

As an aside, electrical utilities around here are wise to the savings we've been realizing by driving on electricity and they want in on that action. My utility eliminated the "super off-peak" rate category last month, which bumped up my charging costs by 46% overnight, and that's a "special deal" I get for owning an electric vehicle. If I had to pay the rates other people have to pay, charging up a hypothetical 60 kWh Toyota would cost me $18. $18 to drive 250 miles is equivalent to paying $3.96/gallon in a regular Prius. When you add California's EV "penalty" for registering an electric vehicle, the cost is more than a gas car.

 

In response to PiPLosAngeles post, anyone seen the flurry of year or 2 old Model 3 owners youtube channels complaining about how hard it is to charge in the LA area? Not level 2 or DC fast but specifically supercharger access.
So many it kinda ruined searching youtube for interesting tesla channels, at least for me, at least 2 years now.
I doubt Toyota is going to risk its long term gasser owners return business by making only zero emissions vehicles in any market world wide currently. That may change along with human understanding as it starts to hit home exactly what each and every one of us, in reality, contributes to the problem, whatever we drive and / or --- etc etc etc....

Besides, if Toyota built a BEV 6 or 7 years ago, how much more competition would Tesla have had to deal with since. Just my thoughts on that subject. as always YMMV

 

I'm just talking about Level 2. A map of them makes them look almost ubiquitous, but many are in private/pay parking garages so not accessible unless you're going to that specific building. From what I can find the ratio of electric cars to charging stations in Los Angeles is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30:1. Without home charging, that's only enough charger infrastructure to power about 33% of the electric cars.

 

Just viewed this last night: John Oliver on the US power grid: ‘It’s not failing us, we are failing it’ | Late-night TV roundup | The Guardian

NIMBY is real and not going away anytime soon.

 

@Tideland Prius It seems that most everything in this current world economy is based on short term costs.

If governments were serious about protecting the environment for anything other than humans, significant changes would have already been implemented regardless of costs at the time.
How long it takes to understand what the future costs are going to look like, is an exercise most would not want to try to estimate.

And swinging even further off topic, while Elon is shooting for humans on Mars. oh the irony.
edit: soapbox entry KSLROMBY (keep sea level rise out of my backyard)